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Tuesday

Love is the every only god

This past weekend I went to a Good Friday service in Virginia and saw my friend Chase preach. He preached eloquently, and read "A Settlement" by Mary Oliver. The poem begins with these stanzas:

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned
into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come
up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their
curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come
home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,
happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to
go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of
this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

On Saturday we walked down by the basin where the cherry blossoms were blooming in DC, weaving between the crowds and the sunlight and the pink falling petals. I went to an Easter Vigil in Maryland at a small church with stone walls, wooden pews and red carpet. The choir sang courageously and the nervous youth minister preached and we all sat with our small candles. They brought out a banjo, and we sang Dry Bones together. I almost cried it made me so happy.

The next day I went to church at the St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital where my friend Michael works. We prayed in a small room on the second floor. The warm breeze came through the windows and I and a few patients, staff members and priests sang "This is the Day the Lord Has Made." At the peace we "bumped knuckles" as a sign of the peace of God.

Michael and I then made our way out to Baltimore to have Easter dinner with friends of his in their house on a street lined with more cherry blossoms. On the way back we talked about work and dating and doubt and God. He reminded of the ee cummings poem our friend Ron had posted on Facebook which begins like this:

love is the every only god

who spoke the earth so glad and big
even a thing all small and sad
man, may his mighty briefness dig

That feeling of love comes and goes, relationships sometimes crumble and we hurt each other because we are stupid. Love is an orientation, Michael said. I can get behind that. I think maybe I'm going to get a tattoo and of this on my arm and I'm going to bump knuckles with everyone I meet to show them the peace of God and learn to play the banjo.